Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The Part I of article presents the current issues and latest trends of one of the public security policy one of priority – ensuring public security in combating crime. In article covers the main quantitative and qualitative indicators of the present-day crime in Lithuania and in the world; the key problems of crime prevention optimization and legal regulation and institutional problems of criminal process control are elucidated. This research focuses in particular on the importance of creating models for control and prevention of new crime acts. Also, the problems of prevention and control of some conditionally distinguished criminal processes – shadow economy, corruption, fight against human trafficking and violence in family environment – are scrutinized. As a result in this research is emphasised the importance of decentralisation in combating crime; the main guidelines of optimization and modernisation in this field are presented. The authors applied general scientific methods of studying objective reality, peculiar to legal sciences: systematic document analysis, metaanalysis, structural-functional analysis, teleological, comparative, critical approach, generalisation and prediction.

Social-economic security – is a basic need, both in the life of an individual, household, and in various associations of people, society and state in common. Security serves as the main condition of life of people in a certain area, that reflects as a more equal distribution of the benefits, as an economic efficiency, a a social-economic stability and security. Municipalities, realizing their specific functions, serves as primary guarantee of social-economic security of the population. Article discusses methodological aspects of the assessment of social-economic security of the state in common, as well as administrative territories of local government in particular. Article deals also with statistical indicators of social-economic security at the local level. Authors has generalized an integral indicator of social-economic development of the municipalities, that helped to estimate the level of social-economic security in the territories of municipalities in Latvia.

In the last few decades, the understanding of security has been changing. New areas emerged which may influence security facets, which were not urgent earlier. Now those facets can endanger individual persons or even states. Breaches of cyber security, separate attacks or intense cyber wars are becoming more usual than conventional wars in the physical space; violations of cyber security may cause great damage, ruin businesses or even temporarily paralyze full-fledged functioning of individual states or regions. Many countries of the world, realizing that such a threat is real, adopted Cyber Security Strategies; for some countries, this is not the first version of such a strategy. This article examines the place of Cyber Security Strategies in the system of state documents, the nature and importance of such strategies as well as whether they are binding on individuals and institutions. The article explores in more detail the principles of ensuring cyber security provided for in such strategies, i.e. the principles identified by the states, as important for ensuring cyber security. It is discussed why these principles are so different in the strategies of individual states.

The article presents the current issues and latest trends of the first public security policy priority – analysis is made of how public security is ensured in the field of public order. The research starts with the discussion of the legal basis for ensuring public order, primarily revealing the concept of public order as such and today’s main threats to public order. Further, analysis covers the problematic aspects of the legal protection of public order: the legal mechanisms of order protection are discussed, whether they are effective, if not effective, how the legal regulation in this field is to be perfected. Attention is also devoted to the problems of human rights protection while ensuring public order. Hereafter, an analysis is provided of the administrative aspects of ensuring public order, covering the setup of the state and municipal institutions, responsible for maintenance of public order, and problems of their activity organisation and coordination. Special attention in this work is devoted to the state-of-the-art problematic aspects of police activity organisation, to the compatibility of the functions and competences of the Public Security Service, analysis of strategic goals, to the research of the opportunities of municipality and local communities for their participation in maintaining public order. As a result in this research is emphasised the importance of decentralisation in ensuring public order; the main guidelines of modernisation in this field are presented. The authors applied general scientific methods of studying objective reality, peculiar to legal sciences: systematic document analysis, meta-analysis, structural-functional analysis, teleological, comparative, critical approach, generalisation and prediction.

The objective of the research is to define the development of constitutionalism and socio-cultural challenges related to the formation process of the European Union’s legal identity. To achieve this goal, the concept of constitutionalism and its changes during the period of the European Union’s development are examined. Tendencies of the European Union Member States’ constitutionalism process are analysed and socio-cultural tensions of the formation of the contemporary European Union’s legal identity, which arise between security and freedom, order and justice and government and society are identified. The article states that the sustainability of public democratic processes and the functioning of the European Union is possible only if the constitutional values are protected. The reseach also reveals that the further evolution of European constitutionalism and legal identity still needs to enhance the development of the rules which could influence the creation and activities of the independent, self-governing EU’s political community.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union the control over the production and sales of narcotic substances in Latvia and Lithuanian decreased significantly. In 1992 the law that stipulated compulsory treatment for drug addiction was abolished. At about the same time relationships among drug addicts underwent a drastic change. In the 70’s and the 80’s drug addicts acquired and produced narcotics themselves but in the 90’s with the start of economic growth, organised crime started to flood the market of our countries with cocaine, Ecstasy, LSD and amphetamines which took over the traditional homemade narcotic substances.

This article aims to find how government expenditure for the sectors of defense, public order and safety influence the economic situation and national security in Lithuania. The problem how government expenditure for public safety relates to statistics of national security and economic situation in the country is analyzed in the article. The fundamental aspects of the structure of public expenditure and relationship between major defense, public order and economic indicators are analyzed in the article. Analysis is made using self-made figures and counted coefficients that show the strength of the relation of the analyzed factors. Resulting conclusions give an answer how government expenditure affects economic situation and safety of the country.

State security in the contex of different legal regimes used for state governance has been considered in this article. Administrative juridical regimes have particular role in policing in context of human rights observance.

The author presents a new European security environment after the “Cold War”, including not only the challenges and threats to the international security but also the essential conditions and problems of the European security evolution at the beginning of the 21st century. He shows the dynamic and constant changes taking place within the international environment and those related to the progress of civilization. Moreover, he stresses that current policy and security measures are not capable of effective action against having to appear before the new challenges and threats. Then the problem of unity and identity in the transatlantic relationship is taken. According to the author, in complicating sphere of the international conditions the role of multilateral institutions effectiveness in the international cooperation increases. Due to the increasing importance of interdependence and internationalization, European security challenges are European-wide and even transatlantic. Addressing them requires the preservation of unity that will be possible by strengthening common identity based on shared values and common interests.

The share of natural gas as an efficient resource in the deficient Baltic primary energy balance is and will be significant (power generation, district heating, households, industry, etc.). Therefore, in the paper the risk of gas supply is evaluated and appropriate actions are recommended to assure reliable availability of affordable and sustainable energy in the Baltic States. Macro-region’s base (including supply and transit countries), risk and cost assessments, timely introduction of non-market measures, high cyber security level of information processing and management systems are the components of the security strategy. The extension of Incukalns UGS, interlinked pan-Baltic LNG receiving terminal and upgrade of cross-border trunk pipelines are recommended as the most efficient tools. Complex realization of all instruments and solidarity of the countries are the key issues to implement proposed strategy.